Plan 9 license

David Johnson david at usermode.org
Sun Aug 20 17:53:11 UTC 2000


On Sun, 20 Aug 2000, John Cowan wrote:
> On Sun, 20 Aug 2000, Kenneth Stephen wrote:
> 
> > 	Has this list already discussed the Plan 9 license (
> > http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/plan9dist/license.html )? If so, could
> > someone tell me whether it is considered open-sources or point me to the
> > relevent messages in the archives (is there an web interface to the
> > archives?).
> 
> We have.  I don't know where the archives may be, so I'll summarize.
> RMS has opined that the Plan 9 license is unfree, and it does contain
> several rather dodgy provisions.  In my personal opinion, these are
> a matter of sloppy drafting rather than pernicious intent:

The questioner was asking whether it was Open Source. It is not yet
"official" Open Source, but it seems to follow the letter of the OSD
even if it strays from the general spirit several times. I
should think that it may be approved at some point, although I
have no doubt that they will be asked to change parts of it. Actually,
it follows the four RMS definitions of Free Software as well...

-- 
David Johnson
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